Hi Montucky, The first and last are the most lovely of your pictures today. We have wild strawberries here where I live and even have a few in my backyard. Of course, I am growing several plastic pots full of domesticated strawberries, too! Have a super nice day!

That’s called a serendipity. When I encountered the flower the light was beginning to fail (it was in a deep canyon among tall cedars) and so I used the flash, setting the flash compensation at -.7EV so it wouldn’t blow out the white of the blossoms. That gave about the right exposure for the blossoms but not enough flash to light much behind it. I touched up the white balance slightly in iPhoto to get the total black. The settings were: aperture-priority, 1/60 sec., f/18, ISO 100 -.3 EV exposure compensation, -.7 EV flash compensation, spot exposure, single area focus, lots of luck.

My internet is being really slow tonight–but it was the perfect way to view the photo of the Smallflower Miterwort…the photo kept unfurling with the strand of blossoms looking like strand of jewels. That is one stunning pnoto–and even more so given how small the flowers are.

Wow oh Wow! Amazing shots! I love the photos of the Smallflower Miterwort and Leaf Jewel. Serendipity with the Miterwort? Well, also skill on your part with the flow of serendipity. That is an amazing capture and well done, Montucky.

Actually, I have been surprised at how many of the same ones you have there. As I look at the distribution of the varieties that we have, so many are quite local, only in a region or a few states. Surprisingly, although I don’t have good hard data to support this observation, I seem to see a distribution along north/south orientation, when I would think it would be more the other way around. In other words, the distribution is farther north and south than it is east and west.

I probably delete about 10% of what I shoot and post about 29% of what I keep. (I have posted 3,756 photos out of 13,000 in my library.) This kind of volume would be cost and time prohibitive shooting film.

Many wildflowers are so small that to really see them well requires some kind of magnification. They really came alive for me when I acquired the close-up lens and figured out how to use it.

Thanks Isa! There are so many beautiful wildflowers here and I think they should be seen and appreciated. I love to photograph them. There have been many species just beginning to bloom in the last week or so and I have photos of about two dozen that I haven’t posted yet. It’s a wonderful time of year here!